Most people strive to be perfect. No, not to be, but to seem so. It's all about beauty surrounding us, not the world itself. Especially now, with social networks.
He's handsome, does his job well, gets along with people, constantly develops himself, reads intelligent books, vacations by the sea, meets deadlines, is ambitious, watches the right movies (with a rating of 7.5 on Kinopoisk, at least), was excellent in school or university, and if not, he says, 'I was just being myself,' loves his country, follows traffic rules, and helps elderly women cross the street. A perfect person.
However, if you think about it, most of us are truly good people. Everyone has not just good traits or skills; each of us is uniquely special. It sounds cliché and trivial, but it's a fact: everyone has something they excel at more than anyone else in the world.
It seems obvious. Everyone is good at something, average at some things, and should probably avoid other areas. Itâs clear to us, but not always to people. They try to be or appear good at everything.
Is it worth it? Or rather, what is it worth?
Let's recall the Pareto principle: 80/20. 20% of efforts yield 80% of the results, while the remaining 80% of work demands 20% of the efforts.
In general, Iâm not really fond of various laws, but I find constant evidence for the Pareto formula. Once I did a report analyzing product defect causesâand, surprisingly, precisely eighty percent of the defects were explained by just twenty percent of the reasons. Remarkably, the 80% of defects accounted for both quantity and cost of parts. It's magic.
So, the same story goes for perfection. A person has one or several key skills or talents. If they use them well, that skill set brings them 80% of success in life. Therefore, they only exert 20% of their effort to apply their talents. Doing what you excel at is easy, right? It just flows naturally.
But the rest of the persona, which isnât a person's strong side, takes much more effort to maintain. Upholding the aura of perfection takes the remaining 80% of effort. Just think about itâfour times more.
Well, if someone wants to be perfect, so be it. Let them spend their efforts on what they wish. But what does this ideal image lead to?
To heightened expectations, what else could it be? If you are perfect, then no one expects anything else from you. You must excel in everything. You cannot make mistakes, ever.
What is allowed for the 'ordinary' does not apply to you, no matter what you do. As the saying goes, if you call yourself a mushroom, get into the basket. Are you the ideal programmer? Then never write bad code. Writing articles? Fine, you must meet the audience's expectations. Claiming you have the perfect body? Forget about beer with smoked ribs. Advocating for a healthy lifestyle? God forbid I see you at McDonald's.
This is a game â for everyone except the unfortunate. It's obvious to others, but not to him. The more effort a person puts into being perfect, the more it seems to him that everyone around is just watching his successes and, importantly, his failures.
And here he is right. Everyone pays closer attention to his failures than to the failures of others. And much more closely than to his successes. As the green goblin said, people are much more interested in the heroâs failures, his downfall, and demise.
In short, no one cares about someoneâs perfection. No one will admire it except the hero himself. And all the efforts spent on creating that image will be in vain.
One author of a book suggested a metaphor to explain the efforts needed to maintain a perfect image. Imagine you always have to carry around a piglet. It squirms, squeals, and you expend immense effort to hold onto the pig. From the outside, it's obvious that youâre doing something silly, and you truly have no reason to carry the pig around. You just want to.
On the other hand, there is a tendency toward idealization. If you do something well, people around you begin to think, and then say, that you are the ideal. They look for in you what was never there. They create the image of that very piglet that you have to carry around, even if you never planned it.
Here, a person decides for themselves whether to conform to the imposed image or not. Most agreeâit feels so nice to be promoted, so to speak. Oh, I didn't even think I was that good. Really, do you believe I write good code? Yes? Actually, yes. I've started to notice that my code is quite good. Quite. No, in factâit's fabulous!
After that, support is turned offâyou have been given an image, and now you must carry it by yourself. Unless you're a governor, of courseâthere's a separate budget item for them called 'supporting the governor's image.' A person is left alone with the image and the efforts to maintain it.
The problem is worsened by the fact that it seems awkward to revert, considering you didnât climb the mountain yourself. It feels uncomfortable in front of those who pushed you up. Their investments in you will go to waste if you drop out. Besides, they won't bother with you anymore.
A few times in my life, I found myself in situations where I was either promoted or some image was concocted for me. But I never became ideal for two reasons: laziness and a fabricated principle.
Laziness has always saved me, starting from school. In fact, I was a nerd and an honor student. So much of an honor student that once I finished two grades in one year. I was held up as an example, pushed to participate in olympiads and contests, forced to sing and dance. But I was too lazy.
I skipped preparation for the olympiad because it was after school. I occasionally got fours, threes, and twos. Fortunately, my parents didnât care muchâthey checked my diary about twice a year. In the end, I received a decent, working medalâsilverâbecause in the 10th grade, I received two twos in one lesson for drawing an apple tree in the margins of my notebook.
Similarly, laziness saved me at work. I would achieve some success, and logic and military strategy suggest that you should build on success. But I am lazy. After a victory, I want to relax, watch TV, and crunch on chips, literally and figuratively. The freshly baked ideal image melts away within a few days.
But laziness alone is not enough. Over the years, certain skills and abilities have developed, and part of the work related to them is done almost with my eyes closed, without much effort. I could maintain the previous level, but I do it carelessly, whereas before I had to really work hard. And laziness no longer helps to resist the attempts of those around me to create a perfect image.
This is where the simple principle of balance comes into play. Basically, do some bad things. Consciously, periodically do what destroys any perfect image.
For example, writing articles. As soon as I write a few articles in a row on one topic, a certain group of readers starts to form. They create expectations and project them onto me. Laziness doesn't save me â I write too quickly. And readers keep demanding more â they find me through personal messages, social media, and some even come in person. 'Give us articles on the topics we like,' they say.
But I don't want to. So I consciously do something unpleasant â I write on another topic. Do you like literary fiction? Hereâs an article on change management. Interested in something about programmers? Hereâs one about managers. Want to know about project management? Sorry, I want to write about doctors.
And sometimes I balance things out so that no one feels upset. I write an article that is bound to be a flop. Simply to reduce the expectations of my readers.
If I don't do this, I start to feel the burden of 'responsibility,' literally physically. I want to write about one thing, but I have to write about another. Because readers want that. Because they want me to be the way they imagine me.
I similarly balance any other activity. For instance, I consciously do not stick to my plan. I follow it for three months, then skip one â even if I have the opportunity to complete it.
Sometimes I write terrible code. Consciously. Silly comments, stupid metadata names, ridiculous property and method names.
In simpler terms, to avoid being a slave to expectations, one must be unpredictable. This can be done through laziness or consciously.
Destroying expectations is easy and simple. Much simpler than maintaining and developing the image created by those expectations. Then, you don't have to spend 80% of your efforts, and finally, you can focus on what really matters. Direct the released efforts into areas where you excel.
The truth is, one act of nastiness isn't enoughâa persona is still created again. New people arrive who haven't seen the conscious offense, while the old ones forget. They think, well, the person slipped up (they don't know I did it intentionally. Although, they'll read this now and find out). And they start crafting what doesn't exist and shouldn't exist.
Thus, the practice of conscious nastiness must be repeated periodically. As soon as I feel the pressure of expectations rising, I immediately â bam, I throw some nasty surprise into the cake. They make a sour face right away, 'oh, so that's who you are,' and then they back off. That's it, now I can work normally.
I apply the same principle, as much as I can, to my subordinates. Most of them are young, and thus soaked in the modern culture of inevitable success in everything. As soon as they start to achieve something â their chin goes up, and they mold themselves into an unknown persona.
No, that's not how it works. The remedy is simple: nastiness. In this case, it needs to be found or created. Finding it isn't hard if you lookâeveryone has their flaws. You donât need to display it for everyone to seeâjust mentioning it in a private conversation is enough.
Creating nastiness is a bit more complexâyou need to give a task that the person is bound to fail within the set timeframe. Not in a way that delivers a strong blow to their significance, but simply to knock them down a notch and bring them back to reality. So they can focus their efforts on work and skill development, instead of crafting and maintaining a persona that is only needed by them.
Here, too, balance is needed. Not to humiliate, not to dunk their head in the dirt, not to kill the desire to do something useful and necessary, but simply to help them stop wasting 80% of their efforts on maintaining an unnecessary persona.
The fewer expectations there are, the closer reality is. The closer reality is, the more adequate the perception. The more adequate the perception, the more correct the actions. The more correct the actions, the better the result.
Although, I'm probably wrong. And you will tell me about it now. I shattered my own expectations and created expectations from you.
Source: habr.com
